Texas Central Railway
Based on Wikipedia: Texas Central Railway
Imagine boarding a train in Dallas and arriving in Houston ninety minutes later. No airport security lines. No traffic on Interstate 45. Just a smooth, quiet ride at over two hundred miles per hour through the Texas countryside. This is the promise of Texas Central Railway, a project that has been tantalizingly close to reality for over a decade, only to face setback after setback in its quest to bring Japanese bullet train technology to the American Southwest.
The story of Texas Central is really a story about why the United States, despite being the country that pioneered commercial aviation and built the interstate highway system, has struggled so mightily to join the rest of the developed world in high-speed rail. It involves stubborn ranchers, political maneuvering, billions of dollars in financing that materialized and then evaporated, and the peculiar legal question of what, exactly, makes something a railroad company under Texas law.
The Technology That Started It All
To understand why Texas Central exists, you need to understand the Shinkansen.
When Japan launched its first bullet train in 1964, connecting Tokyo and Osaka in just four hours instead of nearly seven, it changed what people thought trains could be. The Shinkansen—the name literally means "new trunk line" in Japanese—wasn't just faster than existing rail. It was a completely different kind of transportation, operating on dedicated tracks with no grade crossings, no freight trains, and no speed limits imposed by nineteenth-century infrastructure.
The Central Japan Railway Company, which operates the Tokaido Shinkansen connecting Japan's largest cities, has an almost unbelievable safety record. In over sixty years of operation, carrying billions of passengers, there has never been a single fatality due to derailment or collision. The trains run so punctually that the average delay is measured in seconds, not minutes. When a train is thirty seconds late, the railway issues formal apologies.
The latest evolution of this technology is the N700S Series Shinkansen, which entered service in Japan in 2020. The "S" stands for "Supreme," which might sound like marketing hyperbole until you learn what the train can do. It's designed with a modular architecture that allows operators to customize the number of cars—Japan uses sixteen-car trains, but the system works just as well with eight. It has been tested at 224 miles per hour, though Japanese noise regulations restrict it to 186 miles per hour in regular service because the trains pass through so many densely populated areas.
This is the technology Texas Central wants to bring to Texas. Eight-car trains running at 205 miles per hour, faster than anything that has ever operated in the United States.
Why Texas?
The choice of the Dallas-Houston corridor wasn't arbitrary. At roughly 240 miles apart, these two metropolitan areas sit in a geographic sweet spot for high-speed rail.
Too short a distance, and rail can't compete with driving. Too long, and airplanes become more practical despite the hassle of airports. But for trips between 100 and 500 miles, high-speed rail often beats both alternatives. You avoid the dead time at airports—arriving early, security screening, boarding, taxiing, deplaning, collecting luggage—while still traveling faster than any car could legally drive.
Dallas-Fort Worth and Greater Houston together contain over fourteen million people. The corridor between them is one of the busiest air routes in the country, with flights departing every few minutes during peak hours. The drive along Interstate 45 takes four hours in good traffic, which is an increasingly rare phenomenon. These cities are growing rapidly, and the infrastructure connecting them hasn't kept pace.
There's another factor that makes Texas attractive: relatively flat terrain and relatively cheap land. Unlike California's high-speed rail project, which must tunnel through mountains, cross earthquake-prone fault lines, and thread through some of the most expensive real estate in America, the Texas route is mostly straight, mostly level, and mostly rural.
Mostly.
The Route and the Resistance
The proposed alignment would begin at a station in the Cedars neighborhood of Dallas, connected by pedestrian walkways to the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center. From there, trains would run on elevated tracks parallel to an existing freight railroad corridor, heading southeast through a string of rural Texas counties: Ellis, Navarro, Freestone, Limestone, Leon, Madison.
A single intermediate station would serve the Bryan-College Station metropolitan area and the city of Huntsville. This stop exists largely because of Texas A&M University, the largest university in the state, along with Blinn College and Sam Houston State University. Combined, these institutions enroll over 100,000 students—a significant potential ridership base of young people who might prefer a ninety-minute train ride to a four-hour drive when visiting Dallas or Houston.
After College Station, the line would continue through Waller County into Harris County, running alongside U.S. Highway 290 and a Union Pacific freight line before terminating at the site of the former Northwest Mall in Houston.
This sounds straightforward until you consider who lives along that route.
Texas ranchers are not typically enthusiastic about outsiders coming onto their property. When Texas Central sent survey crews to map potential alignments, many landowners refused them access. When the company argued it had the legal right to survey land for a potential railroad, the ranchers hired lawyers. What followed was years of litigation over a deceptively simple question: Is Texas Central actually a railroad company?
This matters because Texas law grants railroad companies certain powers, including the ability to survey private land for potential routes and, ultimately, to use eminent domain—the legal authority to force landowners to sell property for fair market value if needed for public purposes. If Texas Central isn't a railroad company, it's just a private entity with ambitious plans and no way to acquire the land it needs.
The Legal Saga
A Leon County district judge ruled in February 2019 that Texas Central was not a railroad company and therefore had no right to survey private land. The judge's reasoning was essentially that you can't call yourself a railroad company until you actually operate a railroad, which Texas Central cannot do until it builds one, which it cannot do until it surveys the route, which it cannot do without being a railroad company.
This chicken-and-egg problem seemed to doom the project.
But appeals courts saw things differently. In May 2020, the state's 13th Court of Appeals ruled that Texas Central Railroad and Infrastructure, Inc., along with a related entity called Integrated Texas Logistics, Inc., were indeed railroad companies under Texas law. The lower court had been too literal in its interpretation.
Opponents appealed to the Texas Supreme Court. Ellis County, through which the line would pass, filed an amicus brief—a legal document from parties not directly involved in the case, arguing their perspective might be useful to the court. Other counties along the route joined in opposing the project.
The case, styled James Fredrick Miles v. Texas Central Railroad and Integrated Texas Logistics, Inc., bounced around the state's highest court for months. At first, the court denied review without comment, which would have let the favorable appellate ruling stand. Then, in an unusual move, the court withdrew that denial and scheduled oral arguments.
The core legal question came down to a 2012 precedent involving a pipeline company. In that case, Texas Rice Land Partners v. Denbury Green Pipeline-Texas, the court had ruled that a company claiming eminent domain authority must show a "reasonable probability" of actually completing its project. A company can't just file paperwork calling itself a pipeline operator and then use governmental powers to take people's land for a project that will never be built.
Did the same logic apply to railroads? Did Texas Central have to prove it would actually build the train before it could survey the route?
In June 2022, the Texas Supreme Court ruled 5-3 in favor of Texas Central. The company had eminent domain authority. It could survey land. If negotiations failed, it could force sales. The legal path was finally clear.
The Money Problem
Winning in court is one thing. Finding thirty billion dollars is another.
Texas Central's financing history reads like a roller coaster. The company started as Lone Star High-Speed Rail LLC in 2009, changing its name in 2012. In 2013, it reorganized into two entities: Texas Central Partners, LLC, would build and operate the service, while Texas Central Railway would own the actual rail line. This corporate structure was designed to attract different types of investors for different purposes.
In July 2015, the company announced it had secured $75 million in private funding to move from feasibility studies to actual development planning. This was real money, but a tiny fraction of what would be needed.
Progress continued. In September 2018, the company obtained a $300 million loan for permitting, design, and engineering work. It signed contracts with major construction and engineering firms: Bechtel for project management, Salini Impregilo and its American subsidiary Lane Construction for civil work.
In October 2018, Texas Central announced that Renfe Operadora, the Spanish national railway company, would be the operating partner. This was significant. Spain has the largest and most sophisticated high-speed rail network in the Western world, and Renfe operates most of it through its AVE service. The Spanish company would run the trains, maintain the equipment, manage ticketing, and handle passenger services. Texas Central was essentially importing not just Japanese trains but Spanish expertise in running them.
By February 2020, Renfe had signed a $5.9 billion contract for design and operations. The Federal Railroad Administration, known by the acronym F.R.A., issued its regulatory approvals in September 2020. In June 2021, Webuild, an Italian construction giant, won a $16 billion design and construction contract.
On paper, everything was in place. The technology was proven. The route was approved. The contractors were signed. The legal battles were won.
But then everything stalled.
The CEO's Coin Flip
In September 2021, Carlos Aguilar, who had led Texas Central since December 2016, gave an interview that revealed just how precarious the project's position had become. Asked about the timeline for construction, he said there was essentially a fifty-fifty chance it would begin within six months.
A coin flip. After more than a decade of planning, billions in committed investment, landmark legal victories, and federal regulatory approval, the whole thing came down to a coin flip.
The reason was familiar to anyone who has followed American infrastructure projects: politics. Aguilar said much depended on whether Congress passed a major infrastructure bill. Private investors wanted to see federal commitment before finalizing their financing. Federal officials wanted to see private commitment before allocating public funds. Everyone was waiting for everyone else to move first.
Aguilar stepped down in June 2022. Michael Bui took over as CEO, inheriting a project that had everything except momentum.
Enter Amtrak
In 2023, an unlikely savior appeared: Amtrak, the national passenger rail corporation.
Calling Amtrak "unlikely" requires some explanation. Amtrak has operated America's intercity passenger rail network since 1971, and its history has been marked by chronic underfunding, aging equipment, and political battles over whether passenger rail should exist at all. The company loses money on most routes and survives on annual congressional appropriations. It is not typically associated with cutting-edge high-speed rail technology.
But Amtrak has something Texas Central lacked: political legitimacy and access to federal funding programs. When Amtrak began working with Texas Central in 2023, it brought the project into a different category entirely. This was no longer just a private venture; it was now connected to the national rail network.
This connection mattered for more than just optics. In July 2020, the Surface Transportation Board—the federal agency that regulates railroads—had already ruled that Texas Central was part of the interstate rail network based on planned through-ticketing arrangements with Amtrak. Now that partnership became real.
In April 2024, during a meeting between the leaders of the United States and Japan in Washington, both governments formally signaled their support for the Texas Central project. This was diplomacy in action: Japan wanted to export its Shinkansen technology, America wanted to improve its infrastructure, and Texas Central was the vehicle for both ambitions.
Amtrak took over planning from Texas Central entirely. Andy Byford, Amtrak's Vice President of High-Speed Rail Development, began assembling a public-private funding package. The revised cost estimate was now more than thirty billion dollars—higher than earlier projections but more realistic given inflation and the project's true scope.
In August 2024, Amtrak received a $64 million federal grant from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to continue planning. This wasn't construction money, but it was enough to keep the project moving forward while larger financing was assembled.
If everything went according to plan, service could begin in the early 2030s.
Everything Did Not Go According to Plan
In January 2025, the investor landscape shifted dramatically. Kleinheinz Capital Partners, led by Texas investor John Kleinheinz, bought out the Japanese investors who had been backing the project. The shift from Japanese to American ownership might have simplified some aspects of the deal, but it also removed some of the parties most committed to seeing Shinkansen technology succeed abroad.
Then came April 2025.
The Trump administration, in its second term, revoked the $64 million Amtrak grant that had been awarded just months earlier. The reasons were not publicly detailed, but the administration had shown skepticism toward large rail projects and federal infrastructure spending generally.
With the grant revoked, Amtrak ended its involvement in the project entirely.
In June 2025, Renfe—the Spanish railway company that was supposed to operate the trains—liquidated its American subsidiary, Renfe of America LLC. The operating partner was gone.
After sixteen years of planning, Texas Central was back to square one. No federal funding. No operating partner. No clear path forward.
What Texas Central Tells Us About American Infrastructure
The Texas Central saga is not unique. California's high-speed rail project, which broke ground in 2015, has seen its budget balloon from $33 billion to over $100 billion while its timeline has stretched from 2029 to sometime in the 2030s at the earliest. The Northeast Corridor, Amtrak's busiest route, still can't match the speeds that Japanese trains achieved in the 1960s.
Why is high-speed rail so hard in America?
The legal system is part of the answer. Texas Central spent years fighting for the basic right to survey land, let alone build on it. Environmental review processes, while important, add years and billions to project costs. Every affected landowner, every county commission, every interest group has opportunities to delay or derail projects in ways that don't exist in countries with stronger central governments.
The political system is another factor. Infrastructure projects take decades to complete, but American political cycles run in two and four-year intervals. A project championed by one administration may be canceled by the next. Federal funding awarded one year may be revoked the next. Private investors see this volatility and demand higher returns to compensate for political risk, which makes projects more expensive, which makes them harder to fund, which makes them more vulnerable to political opposition.
Geography and demographics play a role too. The United States is a big country with a dispersed population. Outside of a few dense corridors, there often aren't enough people close enough together to make high-speed rail economically viable. Japan's Tokaido Shinkansen works because it connects a nearly continuous urban strip of over fifty million people. Texas Central would connect two metropolitan areas separated by two hundred miles of ranchland.
And then there's culture. Americans love their cars in a way that's difficult to overstate. The automobile isn't just transportation; it's identity, freedom, personal space. Convincing Americans to abandon their vehicles for trains requires more than just making trains faster. It requires changing how people think about travel itself.
The Future That Might Still Arrive
Texas Central is not dead. The company still exists. The legal precedents established by its court victories still stand. The route is still approved. The technology is still available.
Travis County Judge Andy Brown has advocated extending any future rail line from College Station to Austin, San Antonio, and beyond. This expansion would connect Texas's major cities in a network rather than a single line, dramatically increasing potential ridership and economic impact.
Other high-speed rail projects continue to advance elsewhere in the country. Brightline West, a private company, is building a line connecting Las Vegas to Southern California. If it succeeds, it might demonstrate that high-speed rail can work in America under the right conditions, potentially reviving interest in projects like Texas Central.
The fundamental case for Dallas-Houston high-speed rail hasn't changed. The cities are still growing. The traffic is still getting worse. The flights are still crowded. The technology still exists. The demand is still there.
What's missing is the combination of political will, private capital, and public patience needed to turn a ninety-minute trip from dream to reality. Japan figured this out sixty years ago. Spain figured it out thirty years ago. China figured it out twenty years ago.
America is still figuring.
Maybe someday, you'll board a train in Dallas and step off in Houston an hour and a half later. Maybe you'll look out the window at the Texas countryside blurring past at two hundred miles per hour and wonder why it took so long.
Or maybe this will remain one of those projects that was always about to happen, perpetually five years away, a monument to what America could build if only it could get out of its own way.